ANYWHERE BUT HERE

I don't know Ras G personally. I've never spoken with him in any sense of the word, unless you count reading his Twitter which, most of the time, just alerts the follower of his return to this planet Earth after his frequent trips elsewhere. If you follow him for longer than a day you'll know what I mean.

Ras may be mentioned in the same breath as a bunch of other L.A. beatmakers, but doing so does him little-to-no justice. He churns out beats, sure, but his meditations run deeper. Collages of recycled sound bleed in and out of the mix, snaking around drum snaps, flowing magma-thick downhill from the source. The initial experience erodes softer portions of the ear, each listen piling atop the previous listen, which has solidified slightly and clung to the hardened remains of the listen before that and the listen before that.

This is to say that with each voyage into a span of Ras G's music there lies bits and pieces of sounds you didn't hear the last time you hit play. There's divots to trip you up, ditches in which samples hide and ravines from which his own beats emerge. On his new cassette release El Aylien (out April 27 on Leaving Records), Ras even goes so far as to employ audio clips of interviews as some of the few tangible and comprehensible passages from an EP which is otherwise cryptic and unsettling.

El Aylien is a collaboration between Ras G, Leaving Records and visual artist Kristian Henson, who designed the J-Card art (pictured above) as well as four variations of a digital download card included with every tape. The EP contains four tracks plus remixes from dak, GB and Leaving's own matthewdavid.

Peep a preview mix of the tape HERE then grab the first track leaking out of that monster, "Discipline09-4," below. This piece is an all-collage track which concludes the EP (if you're wondering, his beats ARE featured on the other few tracks) so sit back, take it all in and do yourself a favor - remind yourself to order the tape once it becomes available towards the end of April.





Ras G - Discipline09-4